San Antonio’s Central Library, designed by acclaimed Mexican architect Ricardo Legorreta, opened in 1995. With the dedication of this unique and colorful library building, San Antonio joined other prominent cities that welcome unique contemporary architecture as well as preserve and reuse their historic buildings.

Architect Ricardo Legorreta combined geometric forms, austere walls, saturated colors and light to create exciting and inspiring buildings. Drawing on the concept of the hacienda and traditional Mexican architecture, Legorreta’s urban designs use the exterior wall of a building as a dividing line  a line that forms a bastion against the noise and confusion of the city while creating interior sanctuary spaces that are alive with an ever-changing interplay of light and shadow against walls of bright colors.

Legorreta’s Central Library was conceived and built with a main entrance and fountain on Soledad Street plus a rear plaza-entrance that connected to the sidewalks and bus stops at the corner of Augusta and Navarro streets. The library is designed so that its outdoor public spaces are terraces on the upper levels  places to sit to enjoy fresh air, cool breezes and panoramic views above the noise and pollution of the city.

As the Central Library passed its 15th anniversary, the building required upgrades and repairs. Most of the repair work was completed by 2011. Although there is a pressing need to alleviate the pigeon-roosting problem on the building, and despite the fact that the sweeping terraces are closed to the public and are not being utilized, the library board decided to renovate the ground level rear plaza-entrance instead.

The library’s rear plaza area at the corner of Augusta-Navarro encompasses approximately a quarter of the land designated as library property, and because of its size, impacts the overall look. Logically then, a primary concern in selecting an appropriate design for the plaza should have been to preserve the architectural integrity of the building.

• Was Legorreta + Legorreta consulted? — No.

• Was there consultation with the local architects who collaborated with Ricardo Legorreta when the library was designed and built? — No.

• Was there collaboration with any of San Antonio’s award-winning architecture firms? — No.

• Was there consultation with any of the local experts on Ricardo Legorreta’s architecture? — No.

Despite the options available for expertise in architecture, a landscape company was hired for the project. Surprisingly, the design submitted was approved by both the Library Board and by the Historic and Design Review Commission in 2011.

The first major step in this new plaza project was to take several steps backwards by demolishing Legorreta’s simple and elegant rear plaza-entrance. What’s been built in its place would probably look fine in one of our city’s 19th century parks, but on the grounds of the Central Library the work is simply jarring, discordant.

This new plaza is characterized by a hodgepodge of poured concrete faced with rustic limestone. There is an assortment of curved limestone-faced structures with awkward proportions that are set amid a jumble of paved walkways that mindlessly meander amongst cemented-in boulders. The lay of the land has been fundamentally altered by bulldozing, so that now, earth and concrete cover the base of several of Legorreta’s marching columns and concrete imposes on Legorreta’s giant orbs. White industrial lights have been affixed to the building.

The final phase of this plaza project was the landscaping. Here again, clutter rules. An array of too many different types of plants and trees is squeezed into the few unpaved spaces. This over-planted, over-built plaza will require extensive weeding, pruning and irrigating as well as leaf-blowing, sweeping and power-washing — all of which will drastically increase outdoor maintenance costs for the library in the coming years.

Ricardo Legoretta created buildings that are architectural symphonies – compositions in which every line and every space, indoors and out, was carefully considered. The bold geometric shapes and the materials used in the design of the Central Library should have been reflected in the design of the renovated plaza. Instead, this replacement plaza is alien and diminishes the dramatic space created by Legorreta.

It is nothing short of a defacement of the building and an insult to the memory of Ricardo Legorreta.